When Christoph Eschenbach began his tenure with the National Symphony Orchestra in 2010, he arrived with a recording contract with the Finnish recording label Ondine. He has recorded only one disc with the NSO to date, in 2011 — the orchestra’s first recording since 2001 — which inauspiciously paired some slightly sloppy Gershwin and Bernstein with the premiere of the instantly forgettable “Remembering JFK” by Peter Lieberson.

Eschenbach may not have released any more recordings with the NSO since then, but he has done so with two of his former bands: the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival Orchestra and the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg. With the latter orchestra, he made two Hindemith discs, both recorded live around the 50th anniversary of Hindemith’s death in 2013, slightly after which the NSO programmed the composer’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d"... [Continue reading]